A BURST OF CREATIVITY.

[Just roll with me]

Pierre didn't know why his mother named him that. He was born in a southern Ohio town. Population 522. The only exotic thing the town offered was blueberry ice cream during its annual town fair. Other than that, all was mundane. But Pierre was the other exotic exception. And he certainly hated the burden of such an out-of-the-way name. No, he was not part French, like Mrs Steath asked one Easter near the ladies' restroom the time she was unable to hold her bladder. And nor was he a Haitain refugee from Detroit, like his grandfather's girlfriend asked the day before she drank a bottle of Vodka and then jumped, nude, into the Miami River and drowned. He was just Pierre. Long-legged, sad eyes and a head shape that would inspire the muses of Rembrandt and Bearden. He was certainly odd. No doubt about that. His clothes were either too big or too small and never coordinated. He had a tendancy to let his hair go uncombed for more that a week. And on some instances, he walked the banks of the Miami with a sketching pad but no ink or lead for sketching. So when he disappeared without warning that autumn day, folks just thought he went off to Paris or some carnvial, to be among his own oddly-named oddities. Well, his mother and father didn't think that. They were concerned. Oh, he had spent the night alone, camping in the backyard on many occassion, but his mother was never worried. Pierre loved his solitude and there was nothing wrong with that. So on the second day, when Pierre still hadn't turned the knob and walked through the back door, hair uncombed, clothes mis-matching, his mother broke down. She dropped the plate of French Fries she was eating and broke down near the refrigerator door. Tears dripping all over the salty potatoes. When his father walked in and saw her there, he didn't reach down like you expect fathers or husbands to do, no, he reached over to the phone and dialed 911. And said this: "Operator, my son Pierre is missing. And my wife believes he's dead."

The police scoured the countryside for six weeks looking for Pierre or his remains. A woman from Zainesville drove her Cadillac for two hours just to visit Pierre's mother at her job and inform her she had a dream and in the dream Pierre had turned into a Praying Manthis and was most likely somewhere in their backyard. Pierre's mother ignored the woman and went back to the assembly line before her supervisor docked her pay. But later that night, after her husband was alseep, his snoring so loud it woke the poodle, she crept outside, and looked among the Gardenias for him, calling: "Pierre. Pierre."

Pierre was never found. Nor any of his remains.

But to my surprise, I saw him. Just last week. Walking through a Brooklyn park, holding a sketch pad without ink or lead for sketching... and boy, was he smiling.

Until next time,


Keith

Jena 6.

Speak out against the DISPARITY within our country's judicial system.

Speak out against white students hanging nooses from trees in Louisiana.

Speak out against local officials punishing black youth and not being able to find ONE shred of legal support to admonish ALL forms of racism.

Speak out against people still believing that to do ANYTHING that rings of murdering black youth [whether in fun or not; whether from whites or not] is intolerable and institutionally out of the question.

Stand up for inspiring our black youth.
Speak out against black people accepting mediocrity as excellence.
Stand up for the importance of education.
Speak out against black mothers degrading and dehumanzing their three year old sons in the streets.

Stand up for the empowerment of black youth so that not just thousands of people gather in Jena to protest, but the entire community of black youth across this nation. Who have the ability to be so empowered that as soon as the nooses dropped from the branches, millions of them would have traveled from every corner of every town and said...

WE WILL NOT TOLERATE MEDIOCRITY FROM OURSELVES; AND WE WILL CERTAINLY NOT ALLOW AN ACT OF DEHUMANIZING DIRECTED AT OUR PEOPLE.

And that... that communal outpour from our black youth would be strong enough to pull back the ocean and send it crashing onto the shores of injustice, drowning all things [anti-youth, anti-black] for ever.

Stand up!!!

Until next time,

Keith

SUMMER IN NYC!!!

Me and some Writer and Lover of Writer Folks.

[Don't hate. Writers need Love, too]

First Pic: Tillmans Lounge. My great friend Walton Muyumba. Writer, Professor and a Brother who can rock some Moves.

Second Pic: Tillmans Lounge. Keith and Somi. Somi is this beautiful, smart and amazing singer. She stirs.

Third Pic: 230 Fifth Avenue Roof Lounge. Me, Somi, Walton, Trei and Trei's friend [the clean head guy in black shirt]. Taking a moment.

Family Reunions

Several years ago, when I was in my twenties and living in the Bay Area of California, my father called me to tell the news.
He and his mother and her sister Lillie Mae attended the funeral of their half brother in Cincinnati. A half-brother they never knew or saw. He was born in Georgia, like them. He had migrated to Cincinnati, unbeknownst to them. And he had fathered children and grandchildren, like them [well, in their case, mothered]. But they never laid eyes on him until then.

But the interesting part of the news was my father ran into the Jacksons at the funeral. The Jacksons were a family that lived across the street from us in the Village of Woodlawn. They were an interesting family. Good looking, quick-tempered and obviously mixed with Native American [they even had a wolf who they called WOLF as a pet]. Most of the Jackson children were a few years older than me, but one summer one of their nieces moved in with them, we called her Bee-Bee, and she and I quickly bonded. Like me, she was another artist in the making. She sang in her basement.

Anyway, my father saw the Jacksons at the funeral and wanted to know why they were there. They told him because their father had died. The man in the casket was their father. My dad couldn't believe it. He then told them that the man in the casket was his mother's brother.

All of those years living in the Village of Woodlawn, population 2000. 15 miles north of Cincinnati; 30 miles south of Dayton, and we're living, playing and knowing our very own relatives and didn't even know.

Cut to: I'm 22 or so, living in New York City and I'm watching videos and a video comes on called Last Time, featuring Theresa King aka Bee-Bee. I almost flipped through the roof of my very small apartment in Hell's Kitchen. At the time I didn't know Bee-Bee's mom and my dad were first cousins, but she was still a homegirl from Woodlawn and I was so proud.

And then one day, a few years later, I was living in Oakland, California and I saw Bee-Bee walking down 14th Street and boy, what a reunion. We were living in the same city, we were cousins and we we artists. She longer went by Bee-Bee. She was then Theresa King. And her album was called Broken Puzzle.

A few days ago, I was on the phone talking to my good friend Hakeem in California and he was reminiscing about the great female balladeers of the 80s and he mentioned Theresa. He apparently was in love with her. Well, she and Sherrelle.

We both went online and found her video and a myspace page. And then reveled for a good 30 minutes in her self-taught angelic voice.

I haven't seen or spoken to Theresa King aka Bee-Bee since the early 90s, but I hope she's in the Bay Area still singing.

Until next time,

Keith

Enjoy the Memory.

My Cousin Theresa King's MySpace Page